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Concur CEO Steve Singh (Part 11)

Posted on Thursday, Aug 16th 2007

Steve says he does not segment his customer base by size. I push, because I think he should.

SM: You do not have any bias one way or the other? SS: Not at all. Our distribution strategy is to reach customers of any size. We have no concentration of revenue, by customer or by market segment that is overly significant. If you think about payroll, it is similar. ADP serves customers who are as small as a two-person company and customers who are as large as you can find.

SM: I don’t think they do a lot in the two person range, but there is a small company called PayCycle that is going after the under 20 employee segment, and Paychex seems to be going for the middle market. SS: That is fair, I know the folks at PayCycle and they are doing a great job.

SM: The reason I am delving into this is that there are variations in how you sell to a small company versus a larger company. SS: There are, however I maintain that those variations are changing as web technologies become more pervasive. Today we think of the web as a delivery model in terms of how you use the software, as a person or a corporation. However, I think you also have to think about it as a delivery model for sales and marketing. Why can’t you market and sell directly over the web? You yourself are a great example of reaching customers over the web, so if you look at businesses in the next 5 to 10 years you are going to see a big push by business to market and sell to customers directly over the web.

SM: When you are doing a 10,000 user deal, or a 100,000 user deal, versus a 5 to 10 user deal, is there a difference? With the larger accounts you have to have a sales force to close deals in person. SS: Of course, and I see what you are saying. We have a sales force which is in the field that calls upon larger accounts.

[to be continued]

[Part 10]
[Part 9]
[Part 8]
[Part 7]
[Part 6]
[Part 5]
[Part 4]
[Part 3]
[Part 2]
[Part 1]